Minutes of November 21, 2002 Meeting

1. AUL Report–R. Sewell

Bob distributed a chart of annual growth of print collections over the
last ten years. Growth in books has dropped dramatically; more
surprising, number of bound periodicals added remains flat, despite
cancellations and migration to digital form. Farideh mentioned a task
force on which she is serving (along with Ruth Bogan, Gracemary
Smulewitz, and Christopher Sterback) which will be examining, among
other issues, the workflow of monographs that are missing or being
retrospectively cataloged.

The state budget is $7,711,970 (though this includes rollover of
$600,000 from last year), and the non-state budget is currently
$773,536. $50,000 from state funds has been set aside for a pilot
Recon/Preservation project. Jeanne Boyle mentioned that the recon
project can not be completed before our cataloging records are
reconciled or updated with OCLC, which is a likely vendor for recon
projects. Funding will be needed for that as well. The additional
$300,000 in state money which Bob has set aside for contingencies, will
fund the recon/preservation project, cover some immediate holes in the
budget, and any new electronic sources.

Negotiations between NERL and Elsevier continue. [As of December 6, the
negotiation have concluded.] The negotiations have been long and
difficulty. All NERL libraries will accept only a single year
contract. RUL cost will be $1,325,893 which included the AP/IDEAL
titles which Elsevier now owns and are on the ScienceDirect (SD)
server. This represents an increase of 5.8%. RUL and NERL hope to
develop a strategy for "weaning"us from Elsevier's practice of bundling
in the future–which prevents libraries from meaningful cancellation,
control of the serials collection, and cost containment. The bundling
of journals is a growing practice among large publishers. The 2003
contract for SD includes Elsevier journals to which RUL formerly
subscribed in print as well as to Elsevier journals subscribed to by
other NERL libraries (through a "Cross Access" payment). Other SD
journals titles had been available even though no NERL library had
subscribed, including the complete electronic backfiles to titles which
we have current subscriptions beginning in 1995. These are referred to
as "unsubscribed titles." With the new contract beginning in January
2003 there will be transaction fees at $22/article download –essentially
payment for each use. At last year's rate of access to the unsubscrided
titles, RUL would have to pay about $220,000 in 2003. This is
unacceptable and access to the unsubscribed titles will be terminated in
January 2003. As for the subscribed title (RUL's and other NERL
libraries) will continue to be available, with backfiles for Elsevier
titles to 1995 and to IDEAL titles to 1993.

Jeanne mentioned that a new Electronic Resources Configuration Group
has been established and will, among other things, examine how we can
most effectively use the databases to which we subscribe–for example,
turning on additional features. Jeanne will send out the charge to the
CDC membership, and hopes for additional volunteers to serve on it.

A proposal is being developed for a state-wide Science E-Resources
package to present to the state for funding. Work is being spearheaded
by the State Librarian, with cooperation from public institutions in
VALE, the State Library, and the public library sector. Possible
databases to be included are ACM Digital Libraries, Wiley, a package of
100 or so medical and nursing journals, IEEE, and Science Direct.

The Interlibrary Loan Services: ILL Current Imprint Project, 2001-2002
is available on the RUL home page under Access Services–Reports. The
report includes the number of volumes ordered, prices, call number
ranges and libraries, and individual titles ordered.

2. Acquisition Update–M. Page

Backlog is still low–a week or less. The selector notification project
is going well and can be extended to any interested selectors, so that
they can receive, via e-mail, a weekly report of their orders.

All reserve orders should come through the Reserves staff at the
libraries–not from selectors. Reserve requests must actually be for
courses, with professor and course information attached.

Priority One requests are only for reserve items (sent through Reserves
staff) and for specific patron requests. Please note that a professor
suggesting that the library should have a book does not mean a priority
one request; only if the patron is specifically requesting an item for
his/her own immediate research needs should an order be coded as
priority one. Priority Two requests are only for reference materials
and initial orders for serials. Everything else is Priority Zero. If
selectors write "please rush" or "must spend money before end of fiscal
year" the orders are still priority zero unless they fit the criteria
for priority one and two–so do not bother writing "please rush."
Priority Zero orders are processed on a first-in first-out basis.

Topics of interest at the Charleston Acquisitions Conference included:

wide variety of pricing models (more than 60). "Free with print" turns out to be one of the most expensive models;

more publishers are likely to bundle journals since those not
currently bundling are being severely hurt by cancellations (forced by bundling practices of other aggregators)

Ingenta and Catchword may be experiencing financial difficulties

Institutional Repositories–and how to link among them–a very hot topic.

3. Systems Update–A. Montanaro

Ann distributed statistics and noted that we are no longer counting
"turn-aways" since the numbers are so low. Our number-of-users appears
to be set correctly.

4. New Electronic Resources Priorities

Generalist Team is considering a number of proposals, including the
NewsBank collection of NJ papers and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It
appears that we could retain one microfilm copy of the key papers (e.g.
the Star Ledger in Newark and the Home News in New Brunswick), cancel
other copies, and still pretty much break even. The team will evaluate
and recommend to the AUL by the first week of December. For other
suggested titles, key criteria are one-time purchases (as opposed to
ongoing costs) and break-even titles (where print or mform cancellations
pretty much pay for the new digital version). One problem with which we
are coping is CD-ROM serials that are switching to Web Access only (e.g.
Philadelphia Inquirer) and jacking up the price two or three-fold. When
individual funds cannot accommodate such increases, the best approach is
to submit to the appropriate electronic resources team.